During the eight-year secret war in Vietnam, when Green Beret-led reconnaissance teams and company-size elements ran top secret missions across the fence into Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam, many of those missions were compromised before the Military Assistance Command Vietnam–Studies and Observations Group (MACV–SOG) units landed on the ground.

Exactly how many missions were compromised, or how many Green Berets and their courageous indigenous counterparts were killed or wounded in action as a result of these heinous actions will never be known, due to the highly classified nature of SOG, its tightly compartmentalized command structure and extremely narrow channels of intelligence and counterintelligence reporting.

Thus, one of the hidden horrors of running highly classified missions where intelligence reports were delivered promptly to the White House is this: there are few paper trails to follow and the truth about the degree of compromise, if it ever was documented, will likely never be known.

More than 20 years ago, Soldier of Fortune magazine was the first publication in the country to print stories about the highly classified and deadly SOG missions. Recently gathered information from four separate sources confirms the long-held fears of many SOG Green Berets, who ran what many believe were the deadliest missions during that war where casualties exceeded 100 percent among SOG soldiers.

It’s important for yesterday’s warriors to know about the compromises, and have the hope that tomorrow’s warriors and command structures will be more diligent to guard against possible compromises in future covert operations.

SOVIETS ON THE GROUND

Evidence of Soviets and their commie pals in Laos, North Vietnam and the demilitarized zone (DMZ) was reported early.

SOG recon man Charles Berg said that when he flew visual reconnaissance in that area of Laos and the DMZ in 1967, he observed Soviet aircraft on more than one occasion. During one flight, “I told my pilot to get close to it because I wanted to shoot it down with my CAR-15,” Berg said. The pilot didn’t oblige, “but, we knew those bastards were there.”

During an operation in Laos in November 1968, run out of forward operating base (FOB) 1, Phu Bai, Recon Team (RT) Idaho heard Soviet pilots on their radio conducting aerial resupplies to their men and their North Vietnamese Army (NVA) allies in Laos.

In November and December 1968, SFC Pat Watkins was flying Covey (the SOG forward air controller) for FOB 1 missions over Laos and the DMZ, where he regularly encountered English-speaking North Vietnamese on the day’s operational FM frequency.

“It got so bad,” Watkins told SOF in an October 2008 interview, “that when we arrived over the area of operations (AO), they’d greet me on the radio. I told them to stop playing that Vietnamese music on our frequency and at least play some rock and roll.

“However, it got real serious when we went operational working with a team on the ground. Then, they’d interfere with our radio transmissions. If we told the team to go up two clicks (on their PRC-25 FM radio) or down two clicks (on the radio frequency dial), the NVA would do the same thing.”

In early December, 1968, George “Boo” Miller, a Marine gunship pilot with HML-367, received a call on his UHF frequency from an English-speaking man during a SOG extraction who knew the famous Marine gunship crew’s call sign: “Scarface.”

“He called me several times during the extraction of an FOB 1 recon team,” Miller said in October 2008. “I had run out of ammo and rockets and was making low passes so my door gunners could continue to fire on the enemy and throw hand grenades at them.”

A COMMIE IN THE DMZ

During one of those last passes, Miller observed a Soviet officer in the DMZ, just east of the team’s LZ. “I’ll never forget it. He was a large, white male in a gray-colored uniform with red epaulets on his shoulders,”

Miller said. “He was standing in the middle of a small clearing just east of the team. My co-pilot also saw him when we made a second pass to confirm what we had seen.”

However, when he returned to “fire him up,” the Soviet, “was gone.” After successfully extracting the team, Miller reported his sighting to a Marine general at Vandegrift base. He heard nothing further on that sighting.

About six months later, during a mission in the DMZ, Lynne M. Black, Jr., the One-Zero (team leader) of RT Idaho and his One-One (assistant team leader) Doug “The Frenchman” LeTourneau observed a white male, bathing with a few women in a stream at the bottom of a large series of mountains. The Soviet was too far away for their weapons and Black couldn’t muster up any tactical air assets to nail him.

A month later, on another DMZ target, LeTourneau received a call on his FM PRC-25 radio that he’ll never forget. Speaking in English, with an accent, a Caucasian male said, “RT Idaho. Come in RT

Idaho.” Because it was near noontime, LeTourneau thought it might be Covey doing a routine commo check. The only problem—there was no Covey in the AO.

A STRANGE VOICE KNEW OUR NAMES

Thirty-nine years later, LeTourneau said, “I’ll never forget that radio call for many reasons. Out of the blue, the voice broke radio silence, spoke English, he knew our team name, he knew my name and Black’s name and he knew our codenames. That really blew me away.”

When Black looked at his dumbfounded One-One in 1969, he grabbed the handset and said, “Who is this?”

The mystery man told Black that he knew where the team was located, and that he and his friends were going to find the RT Idaho men and kill or capture them. He said that he had six-digit coordinates on a map where RT Idaho was located.

Black’s response was instant: “Let me help you mother…, here are my eight-digit coordinates. This is exactly where I am.”

“I know who you are, Blackjack, and I’m going to get the Frenchman, too. I’m bringing my friends to get

you.”

Black told him: “I know your mother; she screwed hundreds of Soviet pigs to get your KGB assignment, except you’re dumb like your mother and they sent you to the DMZ instead of the U.S.”

At that precise moment, RT Idaho was near the top of a severely steep mountain. Even a dumb Soviet knew that mounting an attack against a SOG team with high ground would result in many casualties. No attack was launched. Obviously compromised, RT Idaho was extracted from the LZ by H-34 helicopters (code-named Kingbees) piloted by South Vietnamese pilots, under heavy enemy gunfire. Black was flown to Saigon, where he gave a full report. What, if any action was taken on it remains a mystery......

Big Teddy :munchin

Dusty

07-06-2012, 10:23

Big T, what document meant are you referencing?

greenberetTFS

07-06-2012, 10:23

THE "SECRET SOVIET WAR' IN VIETNAM............ PAGE 2

The second confirmation of Soviets in Vietnam first surfaced on the Internet earlier this year, when reporter James Brown of Russia Today covered the first public reunion of the 3,000 Soviets who fought in the USSR’s secret war in Vietnam. The segment that he recorded was released on the Internet.

Held in Zarya, outside of Moscow, the reunion marked the Soviet secret war they fought from 1965 to 1973, hence the celebration of their 35th anniversary of when their official involvement ended in Vietnam. They were the Soviet Union’s “forgotten soldiers,” veterans of a war their government denied involvement in for nearly 20 years.

Only now, long after the old communist regime collapsed in 1991, have officials – both Soviet and North Vietnamese – admitted that more than 3,000 Soviet troops fought against the Americans in Vietnam.

One of those Soviet veterans, identified by Russia Today as Nikolay Kolesnik, said, “We were known as a group of military experts. The commander was the senior expert. Thus, technically there were no Soviets in Vietnam. The only thing we knew we were Soviet people… Soviet soldiers…we had to do whatever it took to stop the (U.S.) air raids…”

Ironically, SOG’s Soviet counterparts had their own plausible deniability, a political subtlety not lost on SOG members who ran all missions in Indian territory without any identification for their deniability if captured or killed.

Lee Cong Niem, a Vietnamese veteran of the VietnamWar, told Russia Today that the communists in North

Vietnam “…have a lot of respect for Soviet equipment and Soviet experts.”

CONFIRMATION OF COMMIE CONNECTION

The third confirmation of Soviets in Vietnam that provided further details of Ivan’s penetration of SOG operational radio transmissions was provided exclusively to Soldier of Fortune by a member of the U.S. intelligence community, who asked to neither report his name nor the specific agency that employed him for more than 15 years. His employment with that agency was independently confirmed.

This operative said that in the early years of his intelligence employment, he worked closely with East Germans and Czechs during the last years of the Cold War in Europe – before the wall came down. hose men had worked with the Soviets who had served in Vietnam during the Soviet Union’s secret war in Southeast Asia. The officer spent lengthy periods of time during the middle and late ‘80s behind enemy lines running clandestine operations covertly in East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, where he eventually developed a rapport with several communists.

A key element of this covert operation involved working with members of the East Bloc/Warsaw Pact military forces, bartering almost anything they could get their hands on and swapping it for materials they could sell. During those years the officer used his mechanical engineering skills and experience to earn credibility and acceptance while working closely with the communists.

“The black market didn’t operate with currency at that time, as it was useless in Eastern Bloc countries,” the operative said. Instead of currency, he traded American blue jeans, racing goggles, gloves, T-shirts and brightly colored logo stickers for foreign material (FORMAT), such as radios, chemical protection gear, Geiger counters, radar bits, pilot helmets, Soviet night vision devices, and many critically sensitive items that remained classified.

A top priority for that operative was obtaining “anything that was aircraft-related, such as data recorders, black boxes, flight charts, training and evaluation manuals and anything on techniques.”

In the late ‘80s, infiltrating into Eastern Bloc countries wasn’t difficult, because the border guards were there to keep people in, the operative said. “We’d infiltrate with materials to trade for FORMAT hardware and items, take them back to our safe house near the border, and Soviet officers would smuggle all of the items into West Germany for us, for a price. From there, we’d transport the booty to stateside.”

THE “YELLOW MONKEYS”

Over time, the U.S. intelligence operative ingratiated himself with the communists and eventually began hearing about the Soviet limited-proxy secret war in Vietnam helping the Vietnamese, whom they called “Yellow Monkeys.”

“At that point in time, I didn’t really know that much about SOG,” the operative said. “Because I was an American, they wanted to impress me, so I let them fill in the blanks. In general, they wanted us Americans to know they didn’t like being there. They said a large percentage of the Soviet troops were artillerymen, mostly Ukrainians, who specialized in anti-aircraft defenses and operating radar around Hanoi. “But, there were some who traveled farther south and worked with North Vietnam’s communications specialists. They told me they had monitored SOG radio transmissions from Leghorn and Hickory.” [Leghorn was the first radio intercept/relay point opened on a mountaintop in southern Laos in early 1967. First called Eagle’s Nest, it was operated by SOG men from FOB 2 in Kontum until the end of the secret war in 1972. Hickory was a radio relay site, where recon teams from FOB 1, 3 and 4 could reach from the Prairie Fire AO on FM frequencies. The NVA overran it in June 1971. Staff Sgt. Jon Cavaiani was awarded a Medal of Honor for defending that site.]

The operative said, “The Soviets had tremendous respect for SOG operators, but they couldn’t understand why the U.S. didn’t use more sophisticated commo equipment or at least encryption communications equipment in Vietnam.”

As the operative accumulated time behind enemy lines, he met more high-ranking communist officials, including a special operations instructor of the highest level who had experience with Soviet operators that had worked in Vietnam, Angola, Cuba, Egypt and other countries. This high-level source told the operative about one Soviet officer trained in special operations who functioned as a foreign military advisor.

That Soviet special operator would listen on SOG radio frequencies and hear Spike teams call in air strikes using clear voice with basic code words, the U.S. operative said.

This Soviet operator had the capability to speak to SOG teams. Trained in Cuba before being assigned to

Laos as a communications expert, he spoke Spanish and English. (He later commanded Cuban troops in Angola, where he was killed around 1979.)

“The bottom line,” the U.S. intelligence operative told SOF, “The Soviets and the NVA knew a lot about SOG recon teams. They also knew, and I couldn’t tell how often, where the teams’ LZs were. They knew many of the SOG recon teams by code name, especially in Laos, where the teams from Kontum and Da Nang, Phu Bai and Khe Sanh ran missions across the fence.”

THE SAIGON SPY

The U.S. intelligence officer also learned one more nugget of information: “I was told that there were enemy agents in the highest command levels of SOG in Saigon. Their cover was so deep, it was never exposed during the Vietnam War.”

That fact confirms many One-Zeros’ suspicions that there was a mole, or a spy in SOG headquarters. Additionally, during a 1996 Hanoi television show, Maj. Gen. George “Speedy” Gaspard was stunned when he saw an individual he knew as “Francois” receive Hanoi’s highest military honor for his years of service as a spy in SOG. Gaspard, who had several tours of duty in Vietnam and in SOG, knew “Francois” and was “shocked” when he saw the program. Francois had access to highly sensitive information while employed by the U.S.

Author and SOG recon man John L. Plaster has a photo of Gaspard standing with “Francois” in Saigon, when Gaspard had no idea of the spy’s real role for the NVA. That photograph of Gaspard and “Francois” is on page 463 of Plaster’s book: SOG: A Photo History of the Secret Wars, by Paladin Press Books.

“There’s no question that he hurt SOG operations,” Gaspard said. “Again, how do you gauge it all? When you look at the success rate of short-term road watch.....

Big Teddy :munchin

greenberetTFS

07-06-2012, 10:24

Big T, what document meant are you referencing?

See Page 2,couldn't put it all on one thread.....:p

Big Teddy :munchin

mark46th

07-06-2012, 10:41

A friend of mine in who was in SOG told me he saw a Russian Major in the A Shau Valley. When I asked him if he shot him, he said if there was a Russian Major, there was an NVA regiment and he didn't have enough ammo to take on a regiment...

I recall MAJ Plaster's book and the general concensus that many missions were being blown before launch, that this was coming from deep inside MACV-SOG. Hence, attempts at changing insertion points literally on the fly from what was known in Saigon prior to launch.

In CPT Stanton's SF history of that period I encountered that same suspicion, which some linked to an LLDB individual...

It would appear this was much more than a 1 or 2 faceted effort, something that has potentially a bigger intel "take" but can allow for some vetting as well, one source to the other. That says Ivan all over it, to me.

QP Big Teddy thanks for posting.

Geenie

07-06-2012, 14:12

The operative said, “The Soviets had tremendous respect for SOG operators, but they couldn’t understand why the U.S. didn’t use more sophisticated commo equipment or at least encryption communications equipment in Vietnam.”

Can someone shed some light on his statement? I would have assumed that such a specialized unit - operating at the highest level of secrecy, with missions of strategic importance - would have had access to the best equipment available, no?

Dusty

07-06-2012, 14:15

Can someone shed some light on his statement? I would have assumed that such a specialized unit - operating at the highest level of secrecy, with missions of strategic importance - would have had access to the best equipment available, no?

The patrols were issued scramblers at some point, but they were too big and weighed too much, so a lot of times, they ditched the equipment.

Ambush Master

07-06-2012, 17:43

We did encript, but it was with single use/single day Tablets/Pads. When we had something either going out or comming in that was sensitive or would give away our general location, we KACKed (sp?) it.

We also NEVER inserted into or Extracted out of the LZ that was reported. We gave 2 Briefings, the second on the helipad @ the Launch Site!!

greenberetTFS

07-06-2012, 18:25

We did encript, but it was with single use/single day Tablets/Pads. When we had something either going out or comming in that was sensitive or would give away our general location, we KACKed (sp?) it.

We also NEVER inserted into or Extracted out of the LZ that was reported. We gave 2 Briefings, the second on the helipad @ the Launch Site!!

AM

Did you guys suspect that russians were in Vietnam?........:confused:

Big Teddy :munchin

Ambush Master

07-06-2012, 18:27

AM

Did you guys suspect that russians were in Vietnam?........:confused:

Big Teddy :munchin

Not in RVN, but up North and in Laos, YES!! Also Red Chinese!!

Brush Okie

07-06-2012, 19:23

Wasn't there rumors that the barracks they hit in the Son Tay raid was full of Chinese troops? Also I heard a rumor they killed a Russian or two on that raid?

I know I read a book where a guy claimed they got into a firefight and the bodies were Asian but big guys and they guessed they were Chinese from Northern China in NVA uniforms. It has been too many years now and I cant remember the book or the details.

Sarski

07-06-2012, 23:43

In situations like this, would it have been possible to split into two groups? One that continues working along proscribed lines and with indiginous peoples (of course altering DZs and such as needed, comms, etc.), and one that works independently of indiginous peoples, perhaps reporting to the senior US Military OIC at the FOB.

This might give one more layer of protection for completing missions and minimizing loss of life.

Of course that is a different solution from having the spy high up in HQ.

If this is crossing over into TTP areas, I don't need an answer back, and I'll just be content to remain curious.

Ambush Master

07-06-2012, 23:54

In situations like this, would it have been possible to split into two groups? One that continues working along proscribed lines and with indiginous peoples (of course altering DZs and such as needed, comms, etc.), and one that works independently of indiginous peoples, perhaps reporting to the senior US Military OIC at the FOB.

This might give one more layer of protection for completing missions and minimizing loss of life.

Of course that is a different solution from having the spy high up in HQ.

If this is crossing over into TTP areas, I don't need an answer back, and I'll just be content to remain curious.

I believe that #9 above covers all of this. Most Teams were not as "Heavy" as a couple of ours. The "Splitting" of a Team would just further complicate the mission and reduce the chances for Both!! How big do you think our Teams were?!

Later
Martin

Sarski

07-07-2012, 00:06

I believe that #9 above covers all of this. Most Teams were not as "Heavy" as a couple of ours. The "Splitting" of a Team would just further complicate the mission and reduce the chances for Both!! How big do you think our Teams were?!

Later
Martin

I know, they were small. Generally 4-6 man, plus some indiginous. Amazing what was accomplished, AM, given the circumstances.

Scimitar

07-07-2012, 03:11

I know nothing of counter intelligence, but was there some effort to info fingerprint.

I.e. you make a very small change to info coming down different lines in the tube, and see what pops out the other end, after a few cycles, you start narrowing down on the culprit.

S

SOG One-Zero

07-08-2012, 18:04

Can someone shed some light on his statement? I would have assumed that such a specialized unit - operating at the highest level of secrecy, with missions of strategic importance - would have had access to the best equipment available, no?
Geenie,
The commo situation was bitterly frustrating and when it failed, deadly.
We put in numerous requests for better commo.
We carried URC-10s for emergency commo with US air assets, which included a beeper that they could hone in on, but the commo was our achilles heal.
One major clue: Some One-Zeros began changing the primary LZ without telling Saigon, only Covey. In most cases, the insertions went smoothly.
Once, when our Kingbee was descending into an LZ, our VN TEam Leader spotted a trip wire across the LZ, which was tied to a 500-pound bomb. That's how bad things got.
SOG One-Zero

sf11b_p

07-09-2012, 06:47

Wasn't there rumors that the barracks they hit in the Son Tay raid was full of Chinese troops? Also I heard a rumor they killed a Russian or two on that raid?

I know I read a book where a guy claimed they got into a firefight and the bodies were Asian but big guys and they guessed they were Chinese from Northern China in NVA uniforms. It has been too many years now and I cant remember the book or the details.

There are two or three books and at least that many articles.

eta: That mention personnel at the second camp that were larger than typical Vietnamese. Also the story of one Raider who found the belt buckle he had taken from a body was a Chinese Officers uniform buckle. One article states that same officer turned in photos and a statement in an operation debrief indicating such a thing.

According to the Captain Udo Walther, Simons' executive officer for Greenleaf, “It wasn't a secret that there were Chinese there (at Son Tay), and it wasn't a secret that there were a bunch of them.” Walther stated he took photographs on the scene of dead Chinese and that he informed his debriefers of their presence during the attack. He does not know where his photos went once the film was turned over. - Son Tay - A Story of Success (Part 2) 01 July 2005 Greg Walker

Colonel Britton offloaded the Simons group and flew to his holding area. The raiders under Colonel Simons were immediately engaged in a furious firefight with what appeared in the darkness to be well-armed Chinese or Russian soldiers. With the advantage of complete surprise, his men killed more than 100 of them within the next few minutes. Colonel Simons hurriedly called Colonel Britton back and reboarded his men for the quick flight to the prison. Remarkably, there were no assault group casualties. - The Son Tay Raid By C.V. Glines

Interesting article here, but I haven't yet found much about the author.

HO CHI MINH’S FOREIGN LEGION

One intriguing aspects of the Vietnam War, still shrouded in mystery and half-truths, concerns the foreign communist volunteers who assisted the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces. During the war thousands of Russian and Chinese advisors were stationed in North Vietnam and South Vietnam. They primarily worked as technical advisors and military engineers, and were usually stationed in the Hanoi-Haipong area. Outside that, there is little or no awareness that these Russian and Chinese advisors, assisted by Cubans, North Koreans, East Germans and other communist influenced nationals also served as advisor to the North Vietnamese forces fighting inside South Vietnam. Although described as ‘advisor’ they also took an active role in combat operations; as a result, some were killed and others were captured.

http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/LuisSilva/00000018.htm

Badger52

07-09-2012, 08:54

I know, they were small. Generally 4-6 man, plus some indiginous.I got the impression that quite often 6, maybe 7 total, was about it. As to the traitor(s)... hopefully some due-process was applied later.

ETA: The accomplishments of MACV-SOG continue to inspire, also considering all the other accomplishments by Special Forces in toto throughout the various countries in the theater during that time.

JYD73

08-13-2012, 10:09

This is a very interesting article. I have heard these suspicions from SOG warriors. I would be very interested in reading more about this. I did an internet search for “THE SECRET SOVIET WAR IN VIETNAM” but the only return result was for this post. Can you please tell me the author and any other information on where I can find this article? Thanks!

mark46th

08-13-2012, 11:12

Russians and Eastern Europeans were not the only caucasians involved in the war on the communist side. The VC/NVA also had French sympathizers...

BMT

08-13-2012, 12:06

The best book I have read is "The Secret War Against Hanoi", Richard H. Shultz Jr.

BMT

BMT

08-13-2012, 12:16

CCS had a target NW of Duc Co that was hot as a firecracker.
RT was usually shot off during the insert.

We pulled a false extraction using dummy's on STABO rigs "NIGHTINGGALE" simulators and the RT went in on the secondary LZ and got shot out the next day.

Also every day at 1700 ASA/NSA would intercept a strong HF station in the Saigon area.
They were told not to DF the station. We had to establish rapport and work with our counterparts!! :mad:

BMT

Badger52

08-13-2012, 13:42

Also every day at 1700 ASA/NSA would intercept a strong HF station in the Saigon area.
They were told not to DF the station. We had to establish rapport and work with our counterparts!! :mad:

BMTThanks for that sir. Another rabbit trail...

Badger52

08-14-2012, 16:07

Not in RVN, but up North and in Laos, YES!! Also Red Chinese!!AM, for you & BMT and others I'll never know, took some time from rec-reading over some hours of the past evening & lunchtime, pouring over some declas'd NSA archives I've got, with relevant snippets over several volumes on different topics. Finding your hot or booby-trapped LZ (or someone talking to your team on your freq) seems to have a variety of contributing factors. Oh what a tangled web was woven in many ways.* A few impressions from the SIGINT/COMINT side of things (most hindsight being 20/20):

The NSA clearly ID'd Chinese participation by '65.
OPSEC programs to control the lack of surprise RE many Rolling Thunder or Arc Light missions revealed that a variety of bad practices gave a very vigilant enemy lots of indicators to the extent that they often had 8 hours notice of an impending strike in an area. Such things as reluctance to encrypt, simple plain-text by support elements in laying out an artillery fan for a ground op, and actually coordinating IAW civil aviation practices the altitudes & routes so good old NOTAMs could be published. The list goes on and they had people on Okinawa, Guam, NKP...
A long standing relationship with supposedly stellar ARVN SIGINT personnel in Saigon, especially their commander, an ARVN Lt.Col. who was regarded as so diligent & squeaky clean that I thought references to him were describing Robert Hansen. Funny, at one time advance transmissions to extreme NE DRV regarding upcoming Rolling Thunder missions were so timely that when the Christmas halt came, so did a halt in the transmissions.
Also, we vastly underestimated the sheer numbers of enemy personnel, technically trained, who lived at the tactical level and had very good SIGINT and DF skills. Plenty of instances of us intercepting THEM relaying their plain-text take from us. They didn't need to apply cryptanalysis to alot of our stuff because we often broke down and used plain-text, busting every OPSEC rule in the book. (I'm not talking about MACV-SOG Soldiers here, but those further back who may have any role in pre-mission coord.) A couple of ARVN SF units in particular were singled out as being notorious for reverting to plain-text when they had to make something clear in terms of coordination.
PW interviews revealed they really were more aware of the rhythms of their "hood" than given credit for.
Certainly relevant to SOG opns it would seem they had some tragic level of success with all their moles, prostitutes, corrupt ARVN, long-term well-placed agents, foreign advisors - and maybe a particular single source in Saigon that didn't care if his HF CW transmissions were heard because no one was gonna touch him anyway...

They also were sometimes very good at exploiting a simple OPSEC screw-up to manhandle an ARVN Ranger Bn. Some of these findings came out over time, some as a direct result of the initial Purple Dragon OPSEC studies at the time. By the way, much of the declas'd stuff is still heavily redacted. However, MOO, the redactions taken in context as the volume "flowed" seem not so much to protect a living technology or person, but a relationship. Not that we'd alter the badguys in a movie remake to switch them from Chicoms to North Koreans...

* There was a special SIGINT person operating out of a village right ON the border, a person who'd previously been an advisor to the Royal Thais. Viewed as a rogue by the Pacific Dep Dir who was gonna shut the op down & substitute their own assets. Said Dep Dir was told in no uncertain terms that he would not be reporting this to NSA HQ and to go about his business. This was just prior to the April '70 Cambode opns, and that analyst operating out of the hut reported only to 2 people: Ambassador Bunker and GEN Abrams.

I have learned that where 1 furball could exist, others are capable of concocting more. If there was a specific POS to point to who was blowing SOG operations I hope someone made chum out of him. Sharks gotta make a livin' too.

Hindsight gives a wider angle lens.
No matter what was in your way, well done gentlemen & Salud.

Inflexible Six

08-14-2012, 20:10

[QUOTE=greenberetTFS;457246

The U.S. intelligence officer also learned one more nugget of information: “I was told that there were enemy agents in the highest command levels of SOG in Saigon. Their cover was so deep, it was never exposed during the Vietnam War.”

[/QUOTE]

This I had heard, that the counterpart teams being inserted into the North were disappearing sometimes to a man, compromised because an NVA mole had infiltrated SOG. I can't recall the source.

As noted above, there were some 15,000 Soviet personnel in Southeast Asia during the war, mostly advisors, sometimes combatants, many of them air defense specialists. There had to have been some from other Eastern Bloc countries and the PRC as well. And it would surprise me if some of them hadn't acted as combat advisors or participated in action.

Badger52

08-14-2012, 21:10

This I had heard, that the counterpart teams being inserted into the North were disappearing sometimes to a man, compromised because an NVA mole had infiltrated SOG. I can't recall the source. I think MAJ Plaster mentions that in his 2nd book.

Having been generously provided yet another trail for my education I encounter from the early days of OPLAN 34A and the OP35 opns piece of that so many things that just make me say "damn." A flow chart for some mission-approvals that enters WashDC (and takes a long time to leave and passes through way too many eyes) that looks like a nightmare worse than Powerpoint hell; cables from the USAMB in Laos at the time (aka "Field Marshal") that prove micro-management of the politics involved isn't a new thing at all; so-called 'mini' sensors to plant whose weight would've been better replaced by ammo... there is alot yet to digest.

From extracts, Mr. Schultz's book is now a must-add to the shelf. Hat-tip to BMT.

I'll say it again - damn.

bushmaster11

09-17-2012, 19:00

As I understand it, the compromised commo was directly related to the WALKER spy ring. They were responsible for the N. Korean capture of the Radio intercerpt ship PUEBLO in 1968. Both the hardware and code books were airlifted to Moscow within 48 hours of capture. Once they had codes and machines, it made radio intercepts of the entire SOG program a snap.

J R sends
De Oppressoi Liber

MAB32

10-13-2012, 13:11

bushmaster11,

You are absolutely correct in your comment. He even admitted to giving the Russians what they needed in regards to codes and what teams were where.

What many non-SOG members have to understand too is that in the communist states, Vietnam was a family affair. You had Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, East Germans, and Cubans. All of which trained North Vietnam its "Counter Recon Teams" against SOG. They also supplied weapons, nurses, doctors, medicines, advisors, and all other type of specialties.

There were also sightings of Russian airplanes and helicopters appearing in the skies over Laos. Some would land on a small airstrip, drop supplies, or shuffle the NVA around in helicopters. The chinese also had airplanes as well. There were times when Russian donated MiG-17s would fly over in Laos possibly taking pictures of certain sites or gathering more intell.